A worker at the Ford factory in Michigan was suspended but said he had ‘no regrets’ after he accused Donald Trump of being a ‘pedophile protector’ during a visit to Tuesday.
TJ Sabula, a 40-year-old line worker, was given the penalty after Trump cursed him out and gave him the middle finger while touring the factory, according to The Washington Post.
‘As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,’ Sabula told the outlet. ‘I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity. And today I think I did that.’
A video shows the president walking across a gangway as he points to a heckler below, mouthing, ‘F*** you.’
Trump then gives Sabula the middle finger as he walks away. Earlier, the heckler could be heard calling the president a ‘pedophile protector’, an apparent reference to the Jeffrey Epstein saga.
‘A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the president gave an appropriate and unambiguous response,’ White House spokesman Steven Cheung told the Daily Mail.
A Ford spokesman said: ‘One of our core values is respect and we don’t condone anyone saying anything inappropriate like that within our facilities. When that happens, we have a process to deal with it but we don’t get into specific personnel matters.’
Trump remains under pressure to release the Epstein files after the DOJ offered up only one per cent of the total archive, weeks after a legal deadline issued by Congress at the end of last year.
The president sparked a Republican rebellion after dismissing bipartisan efforts to release the Epstein files as a ‘Democrat hoax’ at the end of last year.
Trump was a longtime friend of Epstein’s in the 1990s and early 2000s but expelled him from his Mar-a-Lago club for being a ‘creep’. The president has never been accused of any wrongdoing.
Trump flipped off a heckler accusing him of protecting pedophiles during a Tuesday visit to a Ford factory
Trump appears to mouth ‘f*** you’ to the heckler before walking away
Trump was a longtime associate of pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein but the pair had a falling out in the early 2000s
Join the debate
Is this presidential behaviour or pure provocation?
The furor has also swept up former president Bill Clinton who, along with his wife Hillary, defied a subpoena on Tuesday to testify before Congress over his relationship with Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee’s Republican chairman James Comer promised to bring contempt proceedings next week, setting off a potentially protracted and politically fraught legal battle that would be the first time in history a sitting or former president has been held in contempt by Congress.
In an astonishing letter to Comer, the Clintons launched a broadside at Trump and the Republican lawmakers carrying out his ‘cruel agenda’.
They claimed a legal analysis proved they were not required to testify, and insisted the subpoenas were an extension of Trump’s ‘weaponization’ of the law.
‘The Justice Department has been used as a weapon, at the direction of the President, to pursue political opponents. And most recently and searingly, an ICE agent killed an unarmed mother only days ago,’ the Clintons wrote.
‘Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time.’
The Clintons cited the precedent set by Trump in October 2022, when he defied a congressional subpoena demanding his testimony over the Capitol riot.
Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private plane during Clinton Foundation trips before the financier was charged with any sex crimes but denies wrongdoing and says he cut ties years before Epstein’s 2006 arrest.
Former president Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private plane
No evidence has emerged implicating either Bill or Hillary Clinton in criminal conduct related to Epstein.
Epstein was convicted of sex crimes and later jailed pending trial for allegedly trafficking underage girls.
The financier died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial, a death officially ruled a suicide but long the subject of conspiracy theories amplified by Trump’s base.
